At the 1993 national conference on computer-assisted reporting, my baptism by fire, I counted about 500 participants. According to the roster, exactly ten were from local TV stations. It didn't take a relational database to tell me this computer-assisted thing wasn't exactly sweeping the television world. Surveys tell us a large percentage of Americans get their news primarily - in many cases only - local television. Yet CAR has been slow to catch on. Why?

The Disclaimer

Let's tell the simple truth: computers can be a pain. The 20th century has endowed us with a legacy of wonderful technology - the car, the television, the remote control garage door opener. Yet no technology has ever demanded as much of the user as the computer. It's easier for this Luddite to assemble toys for all four of my children at 3 o'clock Christmas morning with instructions entirely in Japanese than it is to navigate relational query by example or structured query language in FoxPro. Maybe that's why the rest of you have moved on to Access - and why I'll never leave Fox. I worked too many years huffing and puffing as I climbed that learning curve.

The Conversion

But I've since joined the clan. I worship at the altar of Phil Meyer, Richard Mullins and Elliot Jaspin. I like using the phrase "comma delimited" in FOIA requests. And, most important, I get a thrill out of finding - even producing - original information. Information that government agencies hadn't thought to look for in their own data. Information that will never be in a press release.

This time last year a tipster told me it was taking far too long for ambulances to reach patients in Durham, N.C., "the City of Medicine." Duke University boasts some of the finest doctors in the world, but it doesn't do any good if the ambulance is too late. I immediately asked whether a database of ambulance responses existed. It did.

After months of negotiation, request, re-request, calculation, conversion of a Julian calendar field, conversion of time in one-thousandths of a second, recalculation for runs that began before midnight and ended after midnight the next day, bugging reporters at WTVT-TV and the Charlotte Observer who had done similar stories, reviewing death records and knocking on doors, I wound up in a neighborhood within two miles of the ambulance headquarters where at least four patients had suffered cardiac arrests, waited for longer than the recommended eight minutes for an ambulance, and died.

The computer can point you to the anecdote and put it in context. Micro and macro. Individual and system. In the ambulance database, it not only pointed me to the cases but also allowed me to draw conclusions about overall delays. It showed me which neighborhoods had the longest response times. Before the computer I would have had the tip and a collection of anecdotes. Too often these descend into a "this is an isolated incident" quagmire. Databases can set this to rest.

Online enhancement

Done correctly, CAR allows us to draw conclusions independent of spin doctors and point us to great stories. Thanks to the Web, we also can pass along that original information to viewers in a form they can use. Information like:

a list of charities that use professional solicitors and what percentage of the donation really goes to the charity a county-by-county database of school violence reports for every school in the state an alphabetical, searchable database of restaurant inspection reports including inspectors' comments

I get a thrill out of finding original information. Information that government agencies hadn't thought to look for in their own data. Information that will never be in a press release.

What we used to send in a self-addressed, stamped envelope to viewers, we can now simply post on WRAL Online. What might take hundreds of pages to print out, we can post in an easily searchable format. Computer-assisted reporters can place public information directly in the hands of the public. I can tell you from my e-mail that viewers love it.

A CAR-powered litany

WRAL has used databases and spreadsheets in many other reports, including:

a judge-by-judge comparison of drunk driving conviction rates to accompany a series of reports on court delays produced by defense attorneys shopping for lenient judges an analysis of state traffic accidents that confirmed anecdotes of motorists dying of fatigue on a certain stretch of I-95 a state database of cell phone calls showing that top state employees were using state phones to place personal calls a database of gas station inspections showing which stations were charging for a gallon while not pumping a gallon and which stations were charging for premium octane while pumping regular octane a school-by-school "report card" with adjusted test scores for poor students that looked beyond raw scores to see how well schools taught the students they were assigned an evaluation of school violence statistics that found dubious reporting methods and raised questions about supposedly declining school violence - a position trumpeted in front page headlines of the state's largest newspapers an analysis of ambulance response times which revealed patients waiting too long for help to arrive a review of speeding tickets to show the likelihood state troopers would write a ticket at less than ten miles an hour over the posted limit a comparison of a military malpractice claims database to the National Practitioners Databank that revealed how the military withheld claims information (with the Dayton Daily News) a comparison of Public Citizen's list of 13,000+ disciplined doctors to databases of military doctors (also with the Dayton Daily News) an analysis of restaurant sanitation inspections that found 95 percent of restaurants in the area get an "A" grade even though some had maggots, rats, or sewage backup an analysis of funeral homes pointing to the increase in corporate ownership

I could go on at length with other examples of computer-assisted reporting for television - many of which you can find in IRE publications or on the first IRE Feed - available on VHS for a pittance.

CAR bloopers

It might be more useful - though embarrassing - to tell of the bigger mistakes I've made. Mistakes peculiar to television. Mistakes perhaps you can avoid.

Most can be summed up in the well-worn phrase: "The data is not the story." Take the ambulance response tale. Yours truly placed the gripping 911 tape and the grieving relative at the end of the story after several minutes of big-picture overview, documents and babble.

(I know. I know. I heard TV remotes clicking all over eastern North Carolina. I violated TV 101 and may be forced to turn in my hair dryer and secret decoder ring.)

In our series on judge shopping and drunk drivers, we placed all the anecdotes in the overview - separate from the conviction rates instead of sprinkling them throughout the other pieces. As a result, the material dried up in most parts.

Keeping the customer satisfied

We know better. But after weeks of doing your own data entry, you tend to become so attached to the data that you want to show them off to viewers. I don't think they care. Especially if "How I Got This Story" is interfering with telling the story properly.

Then there's the eternal question: How much do we mention Mr. Computer? I remember hearing a TV reporter six or seven years ago at an IRE seminar say we should praise the computer in our reporting at every turn. I've since come to view this as a mistake. We never referred to telephone-assisted reporting or FOIA-assisted reporting. Good reporting has always just been good reporting.

Then there's the eternal question: How much do we mention Mr. Computer? Good reporting has always just been good reporting. I hope the computer will become so commonplace soon that calling attention to its use will become gratuitous. It may be already.

I hope the computer will become so commonplace soon that calling attention to its use will become gratuitous.

It may be already. I also say this because TV is a visual medium, and I've used pictures of the computer screen too often. Too many of us have to stare into computer screens all day long at work. We don't want to turn on the TV at home and see them again. There's almost always a better picture - namely, the picture of the subject of the report.

Sharpest tool in the shed

After producing several computer-assisted reports, I got a message from our promotions department: "Can we get away from the computer and use more, say, hidden cameras?" (If you watch KCBS-TV's report on restaurant inspections, you'll find the two are not mutually exclusive.) Promotions saw all the computer references and scrolling the data as death on toast.

I think they have a good point. We don't have to tell viewers every phone call we made to get a story. We don't have to refer to every database or every FOIA request, denial, and battle.

Computers are an appropriate and extremely powerful tool. And as the major source of information for a significant slice of America, we as local TV reporters should know how to use them.

I hope the computer will become so commonplace soon that calling attention to its use will become gratuitous. It may be already.